In today's business world, information on various transactions is generally identified, recorded, or marked by various numbering systems. For example, a single item of merchandise frequently contains a price, a number which refers to its size, shape, color, or quality, the dates the item was made, shipped from factory, or received at one or more points in the chain of commerce, as well as other numbers used for various purposes. The storage and inventory of these various numbers has become a problem in and of itself. The more numbers, and by this is also meant the number of characters in each number, the more difficult it is to remember and use them without error, and the more storage capacity is required in an information retrieval device such as, for example, a computer. Accordingly, there is a rapidly growing demand and need for a method or system for economizing on the amount of numbers required for conducting various transactions. This invention is an improvement on the various apparatuses, systems and methods presently used for identifying, recording and marking various commercial transactions. This invention uses a method or system, and the apparatus for identifying, recording and marking transactions, which economizes on the number of characters required to identify such transactions. Also, each "number", hereinafter referred to as "transaction number", created by this invention will be unique within the system itself.
Many people in business who are responsible for verifying accounts payable, or checking of accounts received, or checking or tracing lost invoices and the like are continuously overwhelmed by the volumes of transaction numbers they face. Many people are simply intimidated by large transaction numbers. Thus, there is a very good business reason to reduce transaction numbers to simpler numbers. My invention provides a system for reducing the length of transaction numbers thus providing less opportunity for error and hence greater clarity and efficiency. For example, if the present zip code system employed by the Postal Service used my invention, there can be 11.5 times more zip codes than presently exist while still using only five characters.
When comparing two transactions or events for sequence, using present means of recording or marking, it may be necessary to compare "year", "month", "day", "hour", "minute" and perhaps "second". Whereas, using a numbering system marked by my invention, the transactions or events are recorded as occurrences along a predetermined sequence and the order of occurrence is explained by my transaction numbers. In other words, events are cross-referenced in terms of the sequence--not in terms of calendar time (i.e., keeping score by innings rather than a time clock). After all, calendar time is essentially a cross-reference of celestial phenomena, an agreed upon system for recording "time". My invention is an apparatus or system for the recordation of occurrences.